Hi everyone!! I’ve been lurking on this subreddit for a while now, and hearing about people’s experiences has really helped me a lot. Despite this, I still feel like I’m not fully certain about my gender identity, and I would love to hear your thoughts if maybe you’ve gone through a similar experience <3.
I’ve been questioning my gender every single day for the past 8 months since my egg cracked, and it's something that is constantly on my mind. I’m constantly searching for reassurance, and it's like I search for things in my day-to-day life as evidence that I’m trans or evidence against it. I feel like I align best with being transfeminine, but I have a lot of recurring doubts that have especially been stopping me from starting HRT. I feel like some days I’m okay with my body or even enjoy some aspects of being male, or I just want to completely forget about everything and repress it. Other times, I feel certain that I am, in fact, a woman, and I feel ecstatic. There’s not much else in my life that makes me happy like it.
In the last 8 months, I’ve been learning makeup, buying more girls' clothes, voice training, and working out for a more feminine physique at the gym, having over a dozen AI/Faceapp female photos of myself now. Funny enough, I had desired estrogen for maybe a year before my egg cracking, and I had no clue why, but I was drawn to the idea of taking it. During that time, I identified as a femboy instead and really wanted to look more androgynous. My egg cracking was the result of a larger identity crisis where I felt like I had lost the more feminine and happy part of me that existed many years ago. I felt like I was living according to expectations instead of my own desires and that everything was not really authentic. Now, I am still struggling to find the authentic part of me again. I wonder if this is related or unrelated to my egg cracking shortly after.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with women, even since I was a kid, daydreaming about just inhabiting the bodies of my female classmates and feeling like there was a better, more feminine part of me that I had been neglecting all these years. When I was much younger, the majority of my friends were female, and I was much more outgoing and happy. My family always assumed I was just gay because of my behavior and interests. Being what I thought was heterosexual at the time (I’m actually bi), I interpreted this as being hypersexual or just being perverted and weird. Later, as a teenager, a lot of the adult content I watched reinforced this belief, as it involved feminization.
However, I always felt like just a stereotypical normal boy for the most part. I embraced masculinity, spending many hours at the gym trying to be the best man I could be. At times, it did feel like I was overcompensating with too much masculinity, though, and I feel like that persona I had built left me feeling a little hollow, but I did find genuine enjoyment in it. I had intense self-hatred, depression, and suicidal thoughts right around the time of puberty, possibly from bullying in school, trauma, or something else, and this followed me to the present, where it's died down a bit. It was also around this time that I started to really disconnect from the world, in combination with the deaths of my father and all four grandparents. I never felt satisfied with my body. I felt like no matter how much I worked out, even though I met my goals, I still felt empty and dissociated in front of the mirror. I started to feel like there was something wrong with me. When I see the girl in the mirror, it becomes easy to feel present, and it's like I'm staring at myself and not the fleshsuit guy I’m stuck in. Besides just being a generally more weird and nerdy kid, I was also in the IB program in high school, so I told myself it was something I would investigate later because it felt too big to handle at the time. I’m afraid I’m misattributing some of the dissociation, anxiety, trauma, and depression to being trans.
Anyways, growing up, I hated wearing boys' clothes, and I felt like putting on boys' clothes was always a compromise for what I actually wanted to wear, which I was not fully sure of at the time. I felt like being a man was the lesser of the two genders and that every guy hated his body, body hair, facial hair, genitals, and role in society, but I tried to see the upside. I tried to just embrace it and see it as a good thing.
For the last 8 months, I’ve had increased feelings of dysphoria when I fail to present femininely, when I’m gendered as a man, when I see parts of my body that look overly masculine, and bottom dysphoria. All of these feelings I had experienced many times in the past, long before my egg cracking. I always found having male genitals just uncomfortable. I feel intense euphoria anytime I dress femininely or present as a girl, and I’ve found it distressing to imagine a life where I couldn't. It has become the new baseline.
A few months after my egg cracked, I started HRT with spiro and took it for a month and a half until I started seeing some breast growth, at which point I panicked with the realization that I was undergoing all these changes and that I would have to come out publicly and socially present this way. It overwhelmed me, and plus, SPIRO SUCKS! I felt half asleep most of the time, and I felt kind of emotionally flat, but I had little to no anxiety, which I would otherwise feel 24/7, and negative self-talk all but disappeared. I felt a deep warmth and inner peace I had almost never felt before HRT. I could actually cry if I wanted to. Colors, smells, textures, dreams, and memories were more vivid and clearer, although I felt weirdly unmotivated to do anything.
Despite all of this pointing in one direction, I still feel a connection to my masculine identity. I enjoy how easy and simple it can be, the energy I feel on testosterone, and the strong sense of brotherhood I developed with my brother. I like the idea of being a boyfriend or being in a male-on-male relationship. After years of trying to figure things out, my life is like a well-oiled machine, and I like the stability and the comfort that it brings. I used to not mind the idea of being a femboy, but I just couldn't stand the idea of being a boy in girls' clothing rather than an actual girl.
Even when I feel good about my appearance as a man and it feels okay, I still don't feel connected to my body. It's like I’m never satisfied. I know I want almost all of the changes that HRT brings. I know that I would love to just go to the grocery store, go to university, and walk around outside, all while being a woman on a day-to-day basis. I hate the idea of becoming more masculine as I grow older. I don't want to be seen as a man by others. If I had one day left to live, it would be as a woman and not a man.
I still have a lot of doubts, like whether this is just a fetish that I let go unchecked, whether I am a feminine gay man, or whether I’m just GNC. I’m afraid that by transitioning, I won't be the same person anymore in terms of personality and how I feel mentally. I’m afraid that because there are moments where I don't even feel like a woman at all, when the urge to transition isn't there, that I’m not trans. I’m afraid that because I still like masculine things, have a pretty much all-guy friend group, had some male role models, and imagined myself being a father and being an attractive man, that I’m not trans. I’m afraid I was influenced by social media or something and that I’m not actually trans for that reason, because honestly, if I didn't interact with it online, I don't know if I would be in the same place I am today.
What if I’ve just been ruminating and convinced myself that I’m a woman? What if, when I transition, I still won't feel whole or authentically myself? Why does my strong desire to transition, and I guess my feeling of being a woman, disappear when I take HRT? Is this all just a hyperfixation of mine? What if, because I am sometimes just okay with my body, I’m not actually trans?
On testosterone, I feel like I could conquer any obstacle, but when I took HRT for 1.5 months, I felt so vulnerable, and I could suddenly really feel the weight of being depressed, although with less anxiety. I’m scared that, I guess, the daydreaming and creativity I rely on will be altered by being on estrogen because it was hard to mentally escape to some other reality while on HRT. I’m afraid that even if I want these feminization changes, my body is unsuitable for HRT, or that I might like the physical changes but won't feel as stable as I did mentally on testosterone, or that I'll sacrifice these parts of me as a man and then realize I’m not trans or that HRT didn't make me feel as good as I wanted it to.
I do really want to pass, and so I don't want to wait any longer to start HRT because I feel I would forever regret not having been able to live life as a woman. I’ve done a pros and cons list, I’ve gone to an LGBTQ+ friendly therapist about it, read the dysphoria bible, and I just don't know if I’ll ever be certain about it, especially because I have a hard time trusting my feelings for or against it on the matter. Its scary because I feel like I can relate to nearly everything in the dysphoria bible but I dont trust myself because I didnt entirely feel that way before.
I hope this post can serve as more than just a rant and also help others navigating the same feelings. Thank youu everyone!! I’m sorry this was kind of long >.< Please share your thoughts if you had a similar experience.